Re: comments relating to Sharjah/Dubai road. Early '66 it was three to four hundred yards wide, being a flattened area of the desert. Late '66, oil was sprayed on a narrower width to provide a bitumen like "road". To stop people driving on it whilst the oil soaked in and dried, 44 gallon drums were set up across it at intervals with armed locals sitting on top.
This was taken early '66 during the floods:
Sisemen wrote
Tom Shepherd had just left by the time I got to Sharjah
Was a regular member of Tom Sheppards bundo-bashing group whilst there. Haven't had so much fun since.